By Köeti Serôdio, Programme Manager Resilience (Humanitarian, Climate Action & Social Protection), Growing Green, Embassy of Ireland
Marta Uetela is a young Mozambican who is transforming the lives of people with disabilities. She founded the revolutionary green start-up BioMec, which developed the world’s first prosthetics and eco-wheelchairs made of recycled plastic marine litter.
Continue reading “Growing green in Mozambique”
By Parnika Jhunjhunwala, Junior Innovation Specialist at OECD Innovation for Development Facility, Benjamin Kumpf, Head of OECD Innovation for Development Facility, and Johannes F. Linn, Co-founder Scaling Up Community of Practice and Senior Fellow at Brookings Institution
Limiting global warming to 1.5°C necessitates radical, quick and large-scale transformations, as echoed throughout the IPCC’s 1.5°C Special Report. The same is true for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. To achieve these transformations, we need disruptive, context-fitting, technological and social innovation, and to create incentives to ensure that once proven effective, innovations are scaled-up. Unfortunately, too many promising innovations fall into the ‘pilot project trap’ and fail to have an impact at the national, regional and global scales.
Continue reading “Scaling innovations to accelerate progress towards development and climate goals”
By Brilé Anderson, OECD Sahel and West Africa Club Secretariat
The year’s COP27 is being called ‘Africa’s COP’. Even though African countries bear little responsibility for global emissions, they bear some of the harshest impacts. But far from being passive observers, they are active participants in the global climate agenda.
Continue reading “Africa’s COP: Where does West Africa stand with respect to the global climate agenda?”
Par Arnaud Rouget, Directeur du programme Afrique de l’Agence Internationale de l’Énergie
La pandémie a eu de lourdes conséquences sur le développement énergétique de l’Afrique. Alors que, depuis 2013, le nombre de personnes ayant accès à l’électricité augmentait – mettant ainsi le continent sur la bonne voie pour atteindre l’objectif de développement durable n°7 (« Énergie propre et d’un coût abordable ») d’ici 2030 – ce progrès s’est inversé pour la première fois en 2020. Ainsi, aujourd’hui, 600 millions d’Africains vivent sans accès à l’électricité.
Continue reading “De nouvelles perspectives énergétiques pour l’Afrique”
By Gerd Müller, Director General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) [1]
Global production networks provide us with a range of opportunities to accelerate transitioning to a net-zero world.
The science is clear: to prevent a global climate disaster, we have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45% relative to 2010 levels by 2030. We also need to reach net-zero by 2050.
Continue reading “Working together on global supply chains can help prevent climate disaster”
By AFD economists Guilherme Magacho, Antoine Godin, Marion Hémar and Emmanuelle Mansart Monat
A hundred and eighteen billion US dollars. This amount, which represents 2.7% of the GDP of Latin America and the Caribbean, is the annual investment in “renewable power generation, energy efficiencies, electrification of heat, transportation, and power grids” the region needs to align with the Paris Agreement’s objective on climate change. To meet this target, countries in the region are adopting policies and fostering technological changes that are generating rapid structural change across the world.
Continue reading “Low-carbon transition in Latin America: what are the risks and the main constraints?”
By Parnika Jhunjhunwala, Junior Innovation Specialist and Benjamin Kumpf, Head of OECD Innovation for Development Facility, Development Co-operation Directorate, OECD
Climate change and biodiversity loss have devastating effects on the planet and on people, especially women and girls. More women die prematurely than men due to environmental degradation. Women face greater economic insecurity due to their reliance on threatened natural resources. And more women than men are displaced because of climate change. Increasingly, governments, development co-operation providers and international organisations are recognising this climate-gender nexus. The OECD Development Assistance Committee’s (DAC) new declaration on climate recognises the “urgent need to support investments in adaptation and resilience that are nature positive, locally-led, inclusive, transparent and gender-responsive”.
Continue reading “Making innovation work for the climate-gender nexus”
By Paul Akiwumi, Director for Africa and Least Developed Countries, UNCTAD
Small island developing states (SIDS) are the most economically vulnerable of all groups of developing countries, according to the Economic Vulnerability Index. They are particularly vulnerable to natural, economic and health-related shocks beyond domestic control. The growing frequency and intensity of these climate shocks is a direct consequence of being in climate-sensitive areas or seismic zones, as well as the islands’ smallness. From commodities to manufactured spare parts, these states also rely heavily on imports of food and fuel, leaving them at the mercy of price spikes and shortages of essential goods.
By Nneka Henry, Head of the UN Road Safety Fund and Jane Burston, Executive Director of the Clean Air Fund
As economies around the world have developed, rapid industrialisation and urbanisation have often been accompanied by rapid motorisation. These trends are set to continue as developing countries continue to industrialise and car ownership grows. The management and regulation of road safety and air pollution are failing to keep up.
Continue reading “A package deal: why we need to invest in safe and clean mobility”
By José Antonio Ocampo, Professor at Columbia University and former UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs and Finance to the G20
Climate change has become an existential threat to humanity. The world has failed to adopt the decisions needed to meet the Paris Agreement targets, restated at COP26 in Glasgow last year, to keep the rise in average global temperature to under 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels and well below 2oC. As the most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicates, current national commitments are still insufficient: CO2 emissions need to fall by around 45% by 2030 from 2010 levels and global emissions need to peak before 2025.
Continue reading “Time for a UN agreement on carbon pricing”